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​The missing link

14/8/2020

4 Comments

 
PictureTwo fences now block a wonderful walk from Wonthaggi
to the coast. Terri Allen fills in the missing pieces from childhood memories.
By Terri Allen
 
ONE of the best ways to spend a day in our childhood was to go out to the Back Beach. Unimpeded by adults, we would set off from the end of Broome Crescent, across the paddocks to the Rifle Range gate. We crossed the undulations in these paddocks made for market gardening during the war.
 
Any other time we would be re-enacting things seen at the Saturday arvo flicks (These would involve inching along the furrows, whooping, shooting from cover, playing cowboys and Indians.) but now we had a different agenda – the beach. We cut across more paddocks, skirted tannin-stained swamps, hunted for Wonthaggi Monster tracks, passed the Southern Tunnel airshafts, skirted Lake Lister, breasted the dunes – Bass Strait, here we come!

After a day of adventures, we heeded the appropriate mine whistle and headed home, wincing bare-footed over scorching sand, discarding sea-wrack treasures as they became too heavy to carry, at other times blackberrying or mushrooming en route.
 
Back at the Rifle Range gate, we headed north, winding along the track used by miners over the decades to get to the Rifle Range, or the beach or Lake Lister to fish. This was a favoured track as we reached the big sandhill. Here we could collect orchids in season or a bunch of heath but also a spray of gum tips for Mum.
 
This section today is our missing link.
 
The winding track on the road reserve has been swallowed up. This is a vital link. If you left the Wonthaggi shopping centre via the Rail Trail, you could exit near the Rescue Station and go via Five Brace and the Tent Town site southwards across West Area Road to enter the mining precinct or Campbell Street bush. A track leads to Campbell Street opposite Old Rifle Range Road. Continuing south, it comes to our high sandhill (now houses) and looks towards the Rifle Range gate … but it is now impeded by two fences across the road reserve.
 
From the gate you can proceed by a red-stone track through the revegetated Rifle Range, past the butts with its great lookout and on to sandy tracks into the Wonthaggi Heathland.
 
Further south you pass the dam, reach Harmers Haven and can follow the beach at low tide to Cape Paterson. This latter part passes the site where Hovell found back coal in 1827, where a mine operated in 1841, where the Truginini story unfolded, where a rail line went to Cape Paterson.
 
This is an area full of Wonthaggi and mining history, an aspirational track, a link of the present to the past,
 
Oh for this tiny missing link from the big sand dune. 
4 Comments
Jim Barritt
22/8/2020 12:06:25 pm

Great memories Terri, and spot on...we need to keep these links open today, more than ever. Sadly the powers that be don’t value the importance of walking track and beach links. This was highlighted over a year ago when Parks Victoria removed the culvert over the main drain between the rail trail / South Dudley and Five Brace. Complaints at the time said it would be replaced, which it hasn’t, ensuring that the drain cannot be forded once the rain comes.
We need to keep these links open at all times for both our physical and mental health.

Reply
Neil Rankine
22/8/2020 08:21:19 pm

Old Rifle Range Road reserve where the fence blocks it at the moment can still be opened to the public. It's a bit wet down the bottom where the Broom Crescent road reserve cuts through, so some appropriate drainage infrastructure will be needed but if enough people tell the shire that they want this track open there is plenty of justification in the shire's aspirational paths/trails strategy. This is a route identified in that plan.

Reply
Brian Carr link
26/8/2020 01:49:21 pm

Is it worth canvassing support for this ? I'm sure residents could see the value in what it could add to the area, and there seems to be a bit more money around for just this sort of thing, not that it has to be a fancy road, (a mate with a bobcat and a slab or two might do the trick :) )....soon to be Broome Crs resident.

Reply
Yvonne McRae
26/8/2020 02:49:49 pm

Well said Terry! I also grew up in Wonthaggi and our home was in Hunter Street. No TV or 'screens' in those days so kids made their own fun and activities. My siblings, other kids in the street and nearby often used the tracks Terry mentions out to the Back Beach, Lake Lister and the bush all around. I do know that some reps. from several of our environmentally aware groups made an appointment and met with a boffin from the Shire Council to outline their ideas of again opening the track to community. Great idea the chap agreed BUT suggested the way to go was for these people to apply for a grant for a feasibility study, then if successful apply for another grant to actually do the work !!!!! Hello? This is Shire land so it is up to the Council to facilitate the whole procedure NOT fob everything off to 'others'. It is budget time with the Council and there is money allocated for walking tracks etc. so how about it? I will write a letter to the CEO for the Council and encourage like-minded folk to do the same. Come on Council how hard is it to kick start a project for our community, visitors to the area and the myriad Uni. students who study and monitor our magnificent flora and fauna. Yvonne McRae

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